The bane of any web designer is trying to make their beautiful website cross compatible with all the different browsers out there. Of course, some don’t really care and say if you’re not using Internet Explorer at 1024*768 resolution you can take a long walk off a short plank.

But for the web designers that care, trying to have your website looking perfect in all browsers can become a little tricky, especially the more complicated your website becomes. With Firefox entering the market, no web designer can continue to hide behind the browser share statistics that used to heavily favour Internet Explorer. Firefox now has 35.4% of the market and has had over 25% for almost two years now.

Even with small market share, it can still impact your business. I’m currently working with a client whose target market is students. His current website has simple drop down menus, but they don’t work in Safari, making his website unusable. While it only has 1.6% of the market, most of that market will be students. My graphic designer uses a Mac, and a lot of young students do to.

As for browser resolution, believe it or not, people are still using 800*600. I was pitching to another client the other day and pulled up her current website to talk about it. Nicely designed website, but on her 800*600 resolution she had to scroll horizontally to see all the content. I don’t know how a web design company got away designing a website that looked crap on the paying clients computer, but that’s the industry unfortunately.

But I digress. I have to go fix my website in Firefox again, apparently some recent changes have broken it. The joy of browser compatibility.

Your website needs four basic components to be built correctly before you start even thinking about getting fancy with Internet Marketing. I call them DUFF for short:

• Design
• Usability
• Findable
• Functionality

Design
If your website doesn’t look professional and trustworthy you can kiss customers money goodbye right from the start. If you can’t get this right, I’m never going to trust you to get a credit card processing system right! Fortunately there are a lot of web designers out there and this is where they excel. Don’t skimp on your web designer, I know you have a friend who can do it, but you need a professional.

Usability
This is the hidden component of design that often gets overlooked. Your website must be ordered in a nice, easy to follow and logical way. Menu systems should be abundant on your pages and easy to use. Every page has an objective, whether it’s to get you to the next page or complete a sale, make sure it’s fulfilling its objective. And make it fast to load, especially if you may have customers on dial-up, you’d be surprised how many that could be. Lots of text but graphics in moderation is the way to a healthy website.

Findable
To use the ancient Chinese proverb: “If you build a business in the forest but no-one is around to visit it, does it make a sale?” This is even truer of the internet and a critical factor. How will you get people to visit your website? Marketing! And one of your critical marketing actions should be making your website rank well in the search engines with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Once it’s there, it costs you very little to maintain and the traffic comes from people wanting to learn about and buy what you are selling. Traffic can also come from other marketing like Pay per Click (PPC) ads and Viral marketing, but SEO should be in every beginner’s bag.

Functionality
Does the website do its job, normally, sell your product? Whether you accept credit card payments online or have contact details on the website, are people buying your products? This is one of the most overlooked aspects of a website and a personal pet peeve of mine. As I said before, every page has an objective, and most of them should be leading the customer closer to the sale. Make sure you write a good website that people are compelled to buy from and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Once you get all these components sorted you can move on to actually marketing your website. We’ll talk tomorrow about some basic techniques to use. But remember, you should be starting with these four aspects or the visitors you attract will just as quickly leave your website.

The best idea for good website design that I can give you comes back to the age old idea of KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

The style of your website design should be simple. The usability of your website should be simple. And the functionality of your website should be simple. Is my message simple enough?

Style
The average attention span of a web surfer is about a few seconds, unless you can grab their attention with something special. If they arrive at your website and find it looks complicated and confusing, another website is just a click away. So keep your design simple if you want them to read what you have to say.

A good website design is clear, uncluttered, and easy to read. Make your article headline stand out, make your navigation easy to find, don’t overwhelm the user with a million choices. We’ll talk about website objectives and flow in a second but the design should work to guide the visitor to where you want them to be.

Also, one of the biggest mistakes design-wise is to add too much technology to a page. Moving or flashing pictures, excessive use of technologies like Flash and Javascript, and other technology before design mistakes are all too common. Does it add to your users experience and make them more likely to buy what you’re selling?

Usability
While we’re on the topic of technology, don’t get carried away with your navigation menus. Remember, keep it simple! Your website should be easy to use and the information easily accessible. If people can’t find the information they want, they leave. Check out the MIT usability guide to see how your website measures up.

Test your websites usability on potential customers, on your friends, your family, your dog, the blind neighbour down the street. Seriously, blind people use the internet as well, can they buy your products and services? And they can’t be far off pre-approving dogs for credit cards either.

Functionality
Does your website achieve its objectives?
Are you selling products, services, or advertising?
And what is the outcome you want from a visitor to your website?

Whatever the objective, you want to make it as simple as possible for a visitor to reach that objective. If you can close the sale through your website in just 10 seconds, do it. No need for fancy tricks and the currently popular 69 page long sales letter. Design a flow through your website, see if visitors follow it. If they don’t, redesign it. If they do, see how you can improve it anyway! No one has a 100% conversion rate.

Unless you’re blogging for fun about how your dog just got pre-approved for a credit card, your website has a purpose. Make sure it fulfils that purpose.

So those are my ideas for good website design. Ignore them at your own peril. Embrace them and watch your website go far.